Managing Change That Has Already Happened
You are the CEO. Ten years ago a competitor emerged creating a new distribution channel. You eventually followed that competitor into the channel, but not until they had claimed a very substantial chunk of business…a chunk that continues to nibble at your market share.
Now that competitor has opened yet one more channel. Industry pundits discount the competitor’s self reported 
progress for the new channel, claiming that the product lines delivered through this new format are not full price product and therefore might not represent true impact. Still, the delivery method has grown from 10% of sales in March of 2009 to 60% of sales in January 2010. From whom do you take your advice?
Peter Drucker “the most important work fo the executive is to identify change that is already happening. The challenge is to exploit these changes and to use them as opportunities. Far too few businesses are willing to slough off yesterday and as a result have too few resources available for tomorrow. ”
The product line in question here are books, the statistics Amazon’s percentage of sales on books “kindle ready”. The trend is real, rapid and irreversible. The game is afoot, has been for some time. Traditional book sellers have already lost with Borders reporting holiday sales off 14% from year ago. Next year the book source brands people will be talking about for the holidays will be Apple, Google and of course Amazon. Borders may well be a division of B&N and most probably there will be more empty retail space to add to the over 200,000 retail doors that have closed since the beginning of this downturn.
I bought two Kindles for Christmas ‘08. One for my very tech savvy eldest, who travels extensively and reads voriciously. One for my tech-aphobe wife whose relaxation depends on books. One week after my daughter left from her Christmas break and went back to work in Texas, my wife still had her head buried in the Kindle and had “improved” the design by adding a battery powered reading light. The game was clearly well underway at that point.
What change that has already happened am I failing to exploit? What game is already afoot, in which I am not engaged?